


“I missed you so much.” For any pairing you like :)

by Amata_Hawke



Series: Tumblr Prompts [6]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 09:03:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19128850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amata_Hawke/pseuds/Amata_Hawke
Summary: For those who aren't a fan of leaving a story on a bittersweet note, this is a fluffy alternate ending. :)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jawsandbones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jawsandbones/gifts).



Gradually, Annabelle begins to realize that she is awake again. Stubbornly refusing to accept this, she keeps her eyes closed and her limbs still, deliberately drawing in long, slow, deep breaths and exhaling just as long and soft. Dimly, she wonders what has disturbed her sleep. Rain drums against the roof and patters gently on the windows, thunder rumbling in the distance. Soft snaps and crackles issue occasionally from the fireplace. The faint, sleepy chords of a lute seem to dance just on the edges of her perception, half-heard and half-imagined notes that keep her guessing about their reality. It can’t be very late, then, if Orana is still awake and the fire is still burning. How long had she slept? An hour, maybe two?

Warm fingers, roughened by years of welding a massive sword, caress her jawline, leaving her skin tingling where the warm hum of lyrium passes over it. His thumb brushes her right cheekbone and then flutters across her eyelashes. Warm breath dances across her face as he laughs soundlessly.  
“I know you’re awake,” Fenris rumbles, his sleepy voice tinged with amusement.

“Yes…. Thank you for that,” Anna replies in low tones. She tries to keep her voice tart, but she can feel the smile tugging at her lips. His hand drifts down, back along her jawline and over the curve of her neck, slipping over her shoulder and then down again, beneath the blanket. His skin against hers, alternately rough with callouses and unnaturally smooth and fine where the lyrium marks it, pulls her further from sleep, and she cannot restrain the soft purring sound that escapes her despite herself. She opens her eyes to darkness, save for the faint red glow of the waning fire, paining a sienna cast on the walls of her room.

She reaches out with one hand to caress his cheek in return, her fingers tracing the taper of one ear and gliding along the square of his jaw. The lyrium in his skin flares faintly as her fingertips brush over it, a dim pulse of soft blue light, and the magic that is always within her suddenly coalesces within her fingers in response, creating the pressurized, tingling sensation not entirely unlike having her hand fall asleep that she knows so well. The reaction is a familiar one, but she withdraws her hand anyway, unwilling to risk hurting him. Fenris, evidently unperturbed, captures her mouth with his own and draws her closer with the hand now pressed into the small of her back, his other hand slipping from beneath the pillow to wind into her hair. She shivers with pleasure at the way his fingers dance along the base of her skull, and despite the bone-deep ache that still permeates her tired limbs, she shifts closer to him, deepening the kiss, savoring the taste of him, reveling in his touch.

He breaks the kiss first, wraps her in his arms, nuzzling her neck, teasing her earlobe with his teeth. She isn’t used to safety, security; she isn’t used to  _wanting_ it, isn’t used to the warmth that spreads through her belly and into her chest, the way she melts against him. She can’t find it in herself to care.  
“I am yours,” he whispers to her, his breath warm and sweet against her skin. “Nothing is going to keep me from you.”

Lightning flashes outside, green and silent, and for a moment Hawke thinks she can see rough stone where there should be elegant masonry, the draperies on the bed hanging in tattered rags. A moment of uncertainty nags at her, the sense of having forgotten something serious. Then the light fades, and his eyes gleam in the darkness, vivid green and filled with warmth and love as he looks at her, into her. The sense of wrongness has no place there, and she dismisses it. It has been far too long since she was home. Too long since she had seen his face, felt his touch. And she is so very tired of wandering, of fighting. Finally, she is home. Finally, she can rest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who aren't a fan of leaving a story on a bittersweet note, this is a fluffy alternate ending. :)

Hawke wakes with a start, skin tingling where ghostly fingers had brushed her. Alarmed, she pushes herself up on one elbow and searches the room. The fire has died down to glowing embers, the smoke still scenting the chill air. The ancient stone walls are solid and dark; though she watches for a long moment, no green lightning illuminates them. It’s quiet in the old room she’s made into a sleeping chamber. No rain patters against the thick leaded window, no thunder rumbles overhead. The air smells of the woodsmoke, layered over the persistent, mustily untouched scent of a building left empty for untold ages. The bed—a fur blanket and thin straw mattress on a frame of unfinished wood—is small, and contains only her own small form.

Relieved, Anna lets herself fall back onto the mattress. She rolls onto her back with a sharp sigh, tries to contain the tremors as she stares up into the darkness of the ceiling. Magic hums uncomfortably in her skin, itching at her fingers. It was only a dream. Only a nightmare.

Except it wasn’t. Dreams are never just dreams for mages, and ever since that last trip into the Fade— _bodily_  into the Fade—they had been much more intense, much more dangerous. The warmth of her home, the scents she misses dearly, the softness of the sheets of their bed, the music. The longing for safety and rest. She can still feel his hands, hear his voice…

No.  _Its_  hands.  _Its_  voice. She calls up the memory of Fenris,  _her_  Fenris, and his deep green eyes—a sort of mossy green, dark and a bit desaturated, but beautiful and powerful just the same. The “Fenris” it had tempted her with had had eyes as bright as gems and as luminous as the lyrium in his skin, glowing from beneath the white hair she knew so well. The demon had copied everything perfectly from her thoughts—their room in her home in Kirkwall, Orana’s playing, her favorite smells and weather, even him—everything, except for his eyes. It saved her life—barely. She has to remember that.

She breathes steadily a few times, but sleep is well past her now. This is precisely why she had left Fenris behind in Kirkwall. In her pursuit of the red lyrium, she had known she would be putting herself at terrible risk, of everything from Tranquility, to death or, yes, even possession. There are still many possible fates in store for her on this journey. But out of all of them, the one possibility that Annabelle fears above all others is the possibility that she might harm—or, Maker forbid, even kill—Fenris, if the red lyrium got its claws into her too deeply. So she had left, leaving a note that said vaguely that she was “investigating something” and hoped to be back later that year, and had done everything she could think of to cover her tracks.

Still shivering from the after-effects of the dream rather than the cold, Annabelle pushes herself back upright and swings her legs down off the bed. Her feet settle on the stone floor, the cold from the masonry seeping rapidly through her thin socks and into the flesh of her feet. The sensation is bracing and leaves her feeling grounded rather than merely uncomfortable, and she lets out a breath that carries some tension with it. Slowly, she hauls herself to her feet, her tired muscles protesting the movement. Ignoring the aches of travel, combat, and poor sleep, Anna dons her robe and a cloak and heads for the door.

She turns the tarnished and pitted metal handle and pulls the door open, and the sharp frost of the late winter night greets her like an old friend. The moon is bright and a light snow is falling in tiny, powdery flakes. She pulls the cloak more tightly about herself and pulls the door closed behind her as she trudges off into the makeshift Chantry courtyard of Skyhold.

The garden is half wild and mostly buried in frost, and the trees are small and bare for winter, save the few pine, spruce, and fir specimens that are scattered about. The smell of the pine trees are a sharp tang in the air that Hawke savors. The chapel is barely indoors, tucked into an alcove with a roof and walls but no door, and the clergy are hard-pressed to keep the candles lit in spite of the wind. Josie had mentioned that the amount of money the Chantry cost them in candles alone was atrocious.

Hawke makes her way up to the battlements, looking out over the fortress. So many people are moving about, even at this time of night. Guards stand watch, people come and go from the tavern, the tavern music dances on the edge of her perception. Hawke expels a breath in a cloud of white and turns her eyes skyward, as if searching for the Maker’s face. She has rarely seen so many stars, even in Lothering, so very long ago. Has it really only been ten years?

It seems like she stands there for hours, though she knows only some number of minutes pass. Then a sound in the courtyard below, an insistent  _knockknockknock_  on a door. She turns her gaze back down, distracted.

Varric is at her door, knocking to try to wake her. Beside him is a figure in a dark traveling cloak with the hood pulled up against the cold. The hooded figure is of average height, with a build that is difficult to see under the cloak. If this were morning and it was Josephine knocking at her door, Hawke might have thought the hooded figure to be another dignitary seeking her acquaintance. If it had been Leliana, she might have thought this to be a contact with urgent information. For Varric to bring her a visitor in the middle of the night…?

Hawke picks her way carefully back down the stairs from the battlements, wary of the frost. A fine show it will be if she trips and breaks her neck. Although it takes her nearly a minute to descend to the courtyard, Varric never stops knocking at her door. Previously muffled by the odd sound-deadening quality of snow, his voice carries to her now as she reaches the courtyard and starts toward him. “Hawke, get out here! …. I promise, you won’t regret it, just get up and come to the door!” Another voice, deep, hoarse, and achingly familiar carries to her over the wintery stillness of the courtyard, speaking with a dubious tone “Are you quiet certain this is her room, Varric?”

First ice, then fire race down Annabelle’s spine and she stops dead in her tracks. The lean figure under the cloak is more clear from this distance, the familiar lines of shoulders she knows like the back of her hand. She tries to speak, but her voice is stifled by fear—what if she never woke up? She tries again, and a third time before she finally manages, quietly, disbelievingly, “Fenris?”

Though her voice is faint, the word is barely off her lips before he’s spinning around, the cloak flying out behind him. His scarring, always reactive to surprise and strong emotions, flares for just an instant, shining noticeably through his hood, sleeves, and trouser legs, and dimly all along his back and other places. Then she is looking into his eyes—those deep green eyes she has missed so dearly. She hadn’t even realized just how badly she had missed those eyes. Nearly a year spent off balance, with the world spinning beyond her control as she desperately tried to claw into it, searching for stable ground for herself and her loved ones to build a life upon, trying to do so largely alone—and it seems that everything simply falls into place in that moment.

The next moment, she is in his arms, her head tucked tightly beneath his chin, her arms locked around him in spite of the breastplate. The fabric of his cloak is twisted in her fingers as she balls her fists into it, and his arms are so tight around her that she finds it difficult to draw in a full breath. She tries anyway, eager to drink in his scent—woodsmoke, sweat, leather, and oiled steel. His gauntlets bite into the skin of her back even through her cloak and her robe, and she savors the discomfort for the way it grounds her. This is no demon. This is  _Fenris._

“I… had feared I would not find you alive,” he mutters into her ear, his voice raw with relief. “When I heard you were at Adamant Fortress…” Anna pulls back just enough to give him a chiding look. “I promised,” she reminds him, and his armored fingers are in her hair as he draws her closer and captures her mouth with his. Her eyes close as she releases his cloak with one hand, reaching up, finding the soft hair at the nape of his neck instead, pulling him closer. What foolishness it had been to leave him behind. How blessed she is by the Maker, that he found her anyway.


End file.
